…1998: Eiger Labs is showing the portable, digital audio player MPMan F10 at the Cebit in Hanover. It is the first device in this class to come onto the market in North America and is therefore the forefather of the MP3 player. The MPMan F10 offers 32 megabytes of memory and can record around eight songs of four minutes each. The device works with an AA cell (Mignon) and can be expanded to 64 megabytes. Commercially, the device manufactured in Korea by Saehan Information Systems was defeated by the Rio PMP300, which was brought onto the market a short time later.
…1999: More and more computers in households, more and more Internet connections – the world's networking is progressing inexorably. Network hardware such as routers and switches can no longer only be found in company IT departments, but also in living rooms. Reason enough for Microsoft, on March 11 to announce your own network devices. Routers and other products for the mass market are to be created in cooperation with the network specialist 3Com (see press release). Until now, Microsoft hasn't exactly been known for hardware, other than input devices, but this deal will change that. However, only for a short time – after a few years the devices disappear from the market again. Maybe Microsoft doesn't like the fact that some users replace the Windows CE-based firmware with Linux…
…2005: On this day, after almost a year of market presence, Nvidia is giving the top graphics chip model Geforce 6800 Ultra a memory boost: In addition to the 256 MiByte model, one with 512 MiByte memory is now also available. Otherwise nothing changes, the clock frequencies remain untouched, the new model is quite rare and expensive.
…2005: Apple joins the Bluray Disc Association (BDA), but even five years later there is no direct support for Bluray films on the Mac. In an interview with “Time” in October 2012, Apple even shoots against it in the form of Phil Schiller Blu-ray. It is a technology that has various problems and it makes sense to ban optical media from computers.
…2010: The official starting signal is given for Intel's six-core processor Core i7-980X from the 32nm Gulftown family. You can read a test of the fastest desktop processor at the time at PCGH.